Friday, October 19, 2007

Sometimes, when a woman is expecting, and everyone is busy wondering whether the baby will be a boy or a girl or who the child will look like, out comes the announcement that she is having twins! It was like that for me when I adopted, not one, but two sourdough starters from fellow bloggers, Suganya and Sharmi. Each bundle of Amish Friendship Bread yeast mix arrived at my home within days of each other, each snuggled in buntings of identical clear plastic bags secured with pink plastic zippers. It was impossible to tell them apart, my twin girls, except for the Day One dates written on them, dates, which I later learned through experience, have no real bearing on the baking results. But I digress.

The black-and-white Parisian street-scene calendar that hangs in my kitchen mostly for show actually earned its keep as a cluttered scratch pad of regimented schedule: do nothing, mash the bags, mash the bags, mash the bags, mash the bags, feed the bags, mash the bags, burp the bags, mash the bags, burp the bags, feed the bags….until I wound up with four times the volume of each original starter I received ten days before. (Which in my case means eight times.)

Once the volume of a batch of starter quadruples, it is parsed out into four equal measures, each one bagged. Three are earmarked for other bloggers or readers, and one is for you. You can follow a simple loaf recipe included with the starter instructions or tinker with it, according to how much of a mad kitchen scientist you are. I chose to tinker with one of the two recipes I selected, despite the fact that I had never worked with sourdough starter before. Call me foolish or inclined to live dangerously, but there were too many other starter-enhanced recipes out there online to be confined to the prescribed recommendation. So I followed my autumnal bliss and sought recipes that would feed the pumpkin eater in me. At this point I can feed more than just a pumpkin eater; I can feed an army. I am now the proud and worried mother of sourdough sextuplets, and all my children need better homes than I can provide for them. And so a new cluster of starters are being sent out into the world to the nurturing kitchens of Meghan, Toni, Ruhama and Wendy. Please contact me (thewellseasonedcook AT yahoo DOT com) if you are interested in continuing the baking circle. I still have a few bouncing bags of yeasty beastie babies up for adoption, free to good homes.

Sourdough whole wheat waffle.

Sourdough Whole Wheat Waffles with Pumpkin Butter and Candied Walnuts

Sourdough Whole Wheat Waffles - From the CooksRecipe.com sourdough pancake recipe, using 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup white flour. Most pancake recipes make excellent waffles; this was no exception.

Mix all ingredients in a medium saucepan over low heat. Allow to gently simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve immediately over waffles or refrigerate promptly in a sterile container. Use within a few days or freeze leftovers.

N.B. It is NOT recommended that you home can or jar pumpkin or other squash products with or without sugar.

Candied Walnuts - My own recipe

Ingredients

1/4 cup maple syrup
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Method

In a small cast iron skillet, heat the maple syrup until just simmering. Add the brown sugar, mixing to melt. Allow mixture to bubble and thicken slightly. Add walnuts and toss them to cover with syrup. Turn off flame. Be cautious with cast iron and melted sugar; both are extremely hot and can cause serious burns. With a metal fork, carefully separate and remove coated walnuts to waxed paper and allow to fully cool.

Assembly

Top each waffle with a generous spoonful of pumpkin butter, followed by a dollop of sweetened whipped cream. Top with candied walnuts.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Cream cheese-filled pumpkin roll.

Classic Pumpkin Roll - Adapted for sourdough use from the Libby's recipe. The only changes I made were the addition of 1 cup sourdough starter and one less egg than the recipe called for. On a scale of 1-10, I would rate the difficulty of this recipe a 4. The most important tips are to use a freshly-laundered, very thin and finely woven tea towel, and heavily powder it with confectioners sugar to facilitate rolling the cake; use more than the 1/4 cup recommended in the recipe. Powdering the towel prevents sticking. Do not use a bathroom hand towel or a waffle-weave dish-drying towel. They are too thick and clumsy. Serves 8-10. --

This is my entry for Kalyn’s KitchenWeekend Herb Blogging # 105, which I am delighted to be hosting this week. Do be sure to return on Monday for the full round-up of fine fare from around the world.

I'd love some of your starter - but, the gods only know what it would be doing after crossing the Atlantic, sitting in the post office during a strike and, finally, wending its way here.On the other hand - Pumpkin Butter! Yes! I'm going to be butchering the big guy soon - and making your Pumpkin Butter! I froze apple and pear butter - I'll do the same with this!

OMG, Susan - You've outdone yourself! I'm salivating. I want to make pumpkin butter and pumpkin waffles and that loaf maybe even some pumpkin muffins....Where will it end? I'll become a poster child for the "before" pictures for Jenny Craig - but I don't care!

Susan, lovie - Culinarily speaking, nothing more than your pumpkin goodies makes me miss the US right now. I love your pumpkin butter and love especially that you use canned pumpkin (which, as we know, is typically butternut squash)...It is a time-saver, and I miss it. Of course, not having it in NZ, I could make my own, but I will have to wait until NZ fall. I could just roast pumpkin with raw sugar to see how that turns out. Might be worthin investigating, actually, since I might be mad enough to invite Kiwi friends to my own Thanksgiving come late-November.

What you've done with the starter is incredible. I would not have thought of making waffles with it! Thanks for all the useful tips for the roll because I was thinking of making a roll with passionfruit when summer is high.

Every Thanksgiving and Christmas it is required by my husband's family that I must make a Pumpkin Roll like yours or I will not be allowed to join the festivities! I have never tried sourdough starter though. I bet it is great! I love your waffle and pumpkin butter recipes! You can bet that I will be trying them in the near future, like maybe this weekend!

Hi, Valli. I like to think of my reserve of canned pumpkin as Armageddon rations. They always comes in handy, and there’s nary a quality difference between it and fresh, even though (technically) it is a squash of a different sort than pumpkin – much, much easier, too – this, coming from a scratch cook!--Thanks, Maryann. Your comment reminds me of “Hänsel und Gretel” – fatten up those babies to eat ‘em up! LOL!--Thank you, Ahn. Pumpkin orange, I think, is the quintessential color of autumn, but papaya isn’t second best any time of year. --Katie – Pear would be marvelous as a butter. Sorry I can’t send to you. Didn’t know you had a strike going on. I am sending some to Scotland; we’ll see how that weathers the journey. --Sra – Thanks, dear girl. They were a bundles of double joy. --Toni – Thank you! Once you get your starter, you will see what it’s like, dizzy with options to enjoy your spongey mess. I promise it is easier than it looks.--Sylvia – Obligado! Yes, autumn is a special time of year, but I love all the particular seasons that New York’s climate offers us.--Wendy – The sourdough will be on its way Thursday, NY Time, the latest. I have fed a special batch to make sure I’ll have enough for everyone. --Dear Lucy – I’d love to send you a big mess of bubbling babies. I CAN, however, send you a recipe for making sourdough from scratch. I will also do the measure conversions; we Americans never did take to the metric system!--Hi, Cynthia! Thank you. I would love to share, but fear all is gone! ; { The recipe on the Libby’s pumpkin can is very serviceable, even w/out my sourdough tinkering. If you would like it, I would be glad to send it to you via email.--Dear Shaun – Please have a Thanksgiving feast. I don’t care where you are or if the holiday doesn’t apply to your down-under country. It’s all about bounty and riches of the earth and gratitude for the blessings of survival which most of the world takes for granted. A passion fruit roll, BTW, sounds like paradise.--Hi, Cyd! Welcome! I “fear” I have started a holiday tradition in my own family (although they do not know it yet!), but I am prepared to “roll” out the pumpkin in all conceivable forms (pies, cakes, cookies, breads, etc.) Thanks for visiting! Good to see you.--Patricia – Thank you! The pumpkin roll really was the star of the dinner table.-- Thanks, Kelly-Jane. It is hard to get just the right photo, but it helps to take more photos than you think you need to come up with one that meets your standards. The pumpkin roll really was light and tender, too. I’m glad the photo translated well to those who saw it.--Shn – Thank you, dear girl! At first I wanted to make a savory and a sweet with my starters, but what the heck, life calls for more sweets! Libby’s, like most manufacturer labels, does have recipes that work; they do kitchen test them. I do not blindly trust anything or anyone, but my experience with most label recipes has proved successful.--Hi, Mike. Good to see you! Pumpkins, even though they are all the rage during the fall season, have the unfortunate distinction of being bumpkins. I just love them. Thanks for coming by. Your visit is appreciated!--Kalyn – I know neither recipe is in keeping with the low-carbed “South Beach Diet,” but there must be ways of working a vibrant orange squash into the requirements.--Hello, Ronell! So good to see you! I don’t have to tell you how impressed I was with your quince preserves. Sometimes when I visit the Cloisters in NYC, the quince trees are in bloom in the courtyards. Your post reminded me of many delightful visits. Thank you for visiting. I appreciate your kind words.

Thanks, Rosa. It's easy to forget what's at the back of the fridge if it's overloaded with goodies, like mine.--Suganya, thank you. And thanks for sending me that first batch of starter. It's been so much fun and something I'd never tried before.--Hi, Sharmi. And thanks to you, I DID have twins. Thank you for thinking of me. : )--Thanks, Sandeepa. There's an old American movie from the 1930s called "Bringing Up Baby." It was a madcap comedy where an heiress keeps "Baby," a leopard, as a pet. Trust me - the sourdough was MUCH easier. : D--Thanks, TBC. Pumpkin butter is VERY easy to make. It is essentially pumpkin pie filling without eggs or milk that you make in a saucepan on top of the stove.

Simona, thank you for your dear comment, and that you have made the time for it. I know how busy you are these days.--Maryann - I hope you and the "girls" in your family enjoy the sourdough. It was easier and more fun than I'd initially thought. I was glad to pass it on to you.

My Portfolio

My Licensed Photography

I cook and bake in that cute little galley kitchen up there. It's not as tidy as it used to be, and the walls are a deep tagine red now, but it's a cozy, homey space where you are always welcome to drop in. You can reach me at thewellseasonedcook AT yahoo DOT com. I'd be delighted to hear from you.